"Bullet" Bob Turley who found fame with the Yanks as a Cy Young winner and hero of the 1958 World Series had died at the age of 82. Turley was a hard throwing no windup right hander. People forget that with all their vaunted power hitting the Stengel era Yanks were also loaded with good pitching. Turley was part of that. An Illinois native, he was born in Troy (Madison County) and graduated from East St. Louis Central High School.

I saw him speak years ago about his baseball career. When the 1960 World Series was brought up (The Yankees lost to the Pirates) he said he wasn't surprised that the Yankees fired Casey Stengel after the Series. Most of the players on the Yankees blamed Stengel for losing the Series, because Stengel didn't start his best pitcher (Whitey Ford) three times in the Series. He couldn't understand why the Yankees also fired their GM, George Weiss. Weiss was the GM for the Yankees during their dynasty years of 1947-1960. Turley pointed out the slow decline of the Yankees began once Weiss was no longer the GM. When the expansion New York Mets started out Turley wasn't surprised that the first thing the Mets did was hire George Weiss. Weiss then developed the Mets farm system that produced the 1969 World Championship team. He pointed out that Weiss was one of the few GMs that are in the Baseball Hall Of Fame. It was definitely an interesting seminar with Turley.